


The Incident

by Zab43



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: ...and thought maggots are quite slow on the uptake, Cute, Fluff and Humor, Hastur-centric (Good Omens), Idiots in Love, Kissing, M/M, Neurodivergent Hastur (Good Omens), Patient Dagon, Possibly Comedy, Romance, Well - his brain is controlled by thought maggots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:20:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28979529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zab43/pseuds/Zab43
Summary: Hastur tries to understand an 'incident' involving his frog and Ligur's chameleon... Poor Dagon has to sort it out...
Relationships: Dagon & Hastur (Good Omens), Hastur/Ligur (Good Omens)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 19





	The Incident

**Author's Note:**

> I've tagged for neurodivergent - but it's a particularly demonic branch of diversity caused by Hastur's brain being controlled by maggots - I'm not trying to represent real-life for real-people here. He's a demon, he's different, that's all.

Hastur was perturbed… or maybe it was disturbed. His brain maggots searched about for the right word. Disconcerted? Dismayed. No, not dismayed, certainly not that. Something both confusing and worrying - an anxiety inducing feeling that, nonetheless, wasn’t entirely unpleasant. A perplexing mix of suspense and hopeful anticipation.

The problem was that he wasn’t confident he understood what had happened and hadn’t got any idea how to go about clarifying it. The incident could have been entirely accidental. It hadn’t quite felt like that though.

He wasn’t good when it came to all that non-verbal stuff, like demons pulled certain faces, or moved in a particular way and it meant something. He couldn’t read the code though. Dagon had tried to help, she’d even drawn some pictures to try to explain, but Hastur still didn’t really understand.

He was at a loss. What could he do about it? How could he possibly talk to anyone about it? He wouldn’t know where to start. How could he explain ‘The Incident’ to anyone? The quotation marks were clear in Hastur’s head - his little thought maggots squirmed around the word unsure whether it was suitable. What else could they call it though?

Hastur’s mind was a wriggling mass of uncertainty, thought maggots that should have been thinking about where he was going were otherwise engaged. He ran straight into Dagon, nearly knocking her off her feet.

“What the blazing Heaven do you think you’re doing?!” yelled the fish-demon angrily.

Hastur mumbled something incoherent that may have been an apology, but equally may have been nothing of the sort. Dagon wasn’t to be fobbed off by it. “You blessed idiot why can’t you look where you’re going?”

This time Hastur looked up and fully realised what had happened. Ooops. It didn’t do to go around bashing into Lords of Hell. He actually apologised this time. His black eyes seeming to focus on the demon in front of him, but in reality staring blankly over her shoulder. He couldn’t concentrate on anything other than ‘The Incident’ at the moment.

Dagon glared at him. She realised something was actually up with Hastur. He wasn’t being aggressive or attempting some sort of show of dominance, he was just… distracted.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked in a slightly less hostile way.

Hastur’s maggots ruminated inside his head. Eventually they came to a consensus. He would tell Dagon and see what she thought. Yes, that was a reasonable plan. Having come to a decision he waited patiently as the maggots assembled themselves into a coherent string of words.

The fish-demon was used to Hastur’s pauses. They often disconcerted other demons, but she knew what they were about. Hastur had a bank of set responses, a repository of phrases, physical movements and facial expressions that he had learned. He identified the appropriate situations for each one - looking for physical cues, listening for key words, watching how others reacted. Then he’d let the right set of maggots to take over his brain for the duration of the expected response.

Usually this meant he was pretty seamless at stringing together a set of actions and words. It could even appear, to the uninitiated at least, like he was reacting in an almost ‘normal’ way. However, give him an unexpected situation and it was different. Deviate from a routine, do something unexpected and Hastur was lost.

Sometimes he’s set fire to something, other times the reaction was different, usually violent in one way or another. Although sometimes he’d just stop, like now. He just didn’t like things not working the way his brain maggots expected, it made things difficult. The maggots used the time to regroup and work out what they needed to do. Dagon waited patiently.

“There was an *incident*” he started uncertainly. After another pause his maggots had put together the next bit of the speech. “A thing that happened and I don’t know what it means, or if it means anything. I’m going to tell you and you will tell me what you think”. No question there. It was a statement - I’m going to tell you and you will tell me….

Dagon sighed “will it take long? Only we’re stood in the middle of the corridor and it’s quite busy”.

Hastur looked about him like this fact hadn’t registered before. Then he turned back to Dagon “yes, I think it will take long… a long time, well maybe not that long, but it might. I don’t know”.

He was getting distressed now, glancing at the demonic commuters either side of him that were parting like the Red Sea to avoid a collision with two senior demons.

Dagon took his arm and led him into a side room. There were some battered looking chairs with stuffing leaking out and a rather unpleasant smell. It was about as ‘cosy’ as Hell got. She sat and motioned for Hastur to do the same. After some moments of hesitation he did. Then he screwed up his face in concentration.

Again there was quite a pause before anything else happened. Then Hastur started “you know Enoch?” (pronounced Ay-knock).

This was an odd opening. The fish-demon thought about it. No, she couldn’t place an Ay-knock. She shook her head and watched as Hastur started getting annoyed.

“Enoch, lizard, you know, lots of colours an’ stuff”.

Realisation dawned. Enoch was Ligur’s familiar. “Yeah, I know” she affirmed and Hastur visibly relaxed.

“Well he eats flies right, like Eli” (pronounced Eel-eye). Eli was Hastur’s familiar. A squat frog that occasionally oozed slime down Hastur’s face and neck, not that he seemed to mind, or even notice come to that. Eli croaked at the mention of his - her? its? - name.

“Eats flies, right, I got that” Dagon gently encouraged him.

“Well, they was both eating flies. In the same room. Together. With us”.

This was getting ridiculous. Dagon was starting to loose patience. “I understand: you and Ligur, Enoch and Eli, eating flies. What about it?”

Hastur took a deep breath. His thought maggots had gathered the words together but he was having difficulty deciding on the order. “Tongues, with tongues, the flies, eating - you know?”

Untangling this Dagon rearranged the words “they were eating flies with their tongues - I’ve seen it. I know how it works”. Eyes rolled, fingers drummed on the arm of the chair.

“They touched. Like on the same fly. At the same time”. Hastur flushed. That was it: ‘The Incident’. He waited to see what Dagon thought.

Dagon didn’t think anything “so?”

Hastur tried again “tonuges stuck together, on the same fly, and then *He* looked at me and his eyes changed colour. All orange and glowing. Wassit mean?”

The eye rolling stopped, as did the fingers drumming. This was interesting. “What did you do?”

The frog-demon shrugged. What had he done? He’d flushed red, and stared back at Ligur while Eli disentangled him/her/itself. Then he’d run away. He wasn’t sure how to explain all that. There were too many words, too many concepts. He made real eye contact with Dagon in a mute appeal for understanding.

It didn’t seem to be working, she was just looking right back at him, like she expected a response. His maggots wriggled round trying to find a suitable reaction, or some words: “dunno” was all they could come up with.

Dagon tried to prompt him “did you say anything to him?”

Hastur shook his head - say anything?! What would he say? Nothing like that had ever happened before. He couldn’t even begin to think of what sort of words he would need to assemble in that situation.

“Did you look at him?”

“Yeah. For a bit, well, a lot of a bit maybe, maybe just a lot. Long time looking, yeah, probably a long time….an’ he looked back, all glowing eyes, an’ Enoch and Eli, tongues touching too, for ages. Then I didn’t know what to do so I ran away. Does it mean something?” Hastur was getting agitated and Dagon looked around to make sure there was nothing too flammable nearby.

“Do you want it to mean something?”

Hastur nodded immediately. That was unexpected. He didn’t usually respond to questions that quickly.

“Yeah, only maybe it didn’t, like it was just an accident and that’s it, but I don’t know what to do. Do you think it was an accident?”

Dagon nearly laughed. Hastur’s expression was usually unreadable, but this time she read it all too clearly. “You like him don’t you?”

The frog-demon was confused “who?”

“Ligur, you like him don’t you? Wanna ‘touch tongues’ with *him* don’t you?” Dagon was very close to laughing now. She’d seen Ligur looking at Hastur and noticed how he always wanted to sit near him. Watched the blessed demon gazing longingly at froggie and trying his hardest to ‘accidentally’ get close enough to touch him. She knew too that Hastur would never in a million years notice it himself.

Well, good for Ligur, he’d found another way to get Hastur’s attention. A way that even the usually oblivious frog-demon couldn’t miss.

During this pause Hastur’s brain maggots had considered the question enough to make an answer. He wasn’t sure he wanted to share it with Dagon though. He decided to park the answer for a while and go back to the original question. “Does it mean something? ‘The Incident’ I mean. Or was it an accident?”

This time Dagon couldn’t help but laugh. She cackled alarmingly and Hastur flinched. He didn’t like loud noises. He considered leaving. He wouldn’t get an answer, but at least it would be quiet. The fish-demon noticed and her laughter subsided.

Solemnly Dagon answered “yes, I think it means something. I think you should find Ligur and talk to him”.

Hastur considered that suggestion. No: it wouldn’t do. He couldn’t just go up and ‘talk’ to someone. That was ridiculous. What would he say?

Especially to Ligur, with those glowing eyes, all orange and bright, looking at him, making him flush bright red and want to run away. Not really run away though, more like he wanted to stay forever, but he couldn’t just look at someone for a really long time. It was weird. He was flushing just thinking about it. He shook his head.

Dagon sighed in an exasperated way. Hastur and Ligur were Dukes of Hell for Satan’s sake. They could happily tempt humans into all sorts of sinful behaviour, but they couldn’t even talk to each other! This was ridiculous.

“Maybe you can talk to him” Hastur suggested hopefully, but the other demon shook her head.

“No good me talking to him is it? You’re the one he wants to talk to…. more than talk to!”

“Can’t do the ‘talking’ thing. You know that”.

“You’re talking to me aren’t you?”

Hastur shook his head. “I mean talking to real demons, not like you, I annoy real demons, they don’t like me. I want him to like me”. There he’d admitted it. He waited for a helpful suggestion from Dagon.

Dagon growled at him. Hastur was very close to finding out what ‘real demons’ did when they got annoyed. However, somewhere within the demon there was a stirring of something that, in any other entity, could be called sympathy.

“Wait there, I’ll be back soon” she said and abruptly walked out.

Hastur waited. He wasn’t sure what had happened, or where Dagon was going. However, he had a weird faith in Dagon to sort this out for him. She was the one who had helped him put together some of his stock responses.

She had tried to explain about ‘tone of voice’ too - how it changed the meaning of what someone was saying. He didn’t really get it, why confuse things by saying them wrong? If you didn’t like something why not say ‘I don’t like it’ instead of ‘oh yeah, I really enjoyed that’ in a ‘tone of voice’ that meant you didn’t?

At least Dagon seemed to understand his confusion, and she would wait while his maggots worked out what he should think, or say, or do. He hated when demons jumped in before his thoughts had had time to wriggle together and decide for themselves. Yeah - Dagon would sort it out for him. 

The door opened and someone came in. He didn’t bother looking. It would be Dagon. He didn’t need to see her. She’d said she’d back soon so here she was. He waited for her to sit down. Instead of sitting down Dagon made a strange growling noise. That didn’t sound like Dagon. Maybe he should look, just to be sure. He considered whether to look or not for a while.

“Errr, hi! Dagon says you wanted to talk to me”.

That certainly wasn’t Dagon. Hastur looked up. Looked straight into glowing orange eyes. He felt his face flush again. He stood and took a step forwards, trying to find a way out of the situation, he needed to get out now.

Ligur was stood in front of the door. He couldn’t get past. The panic started to descend, until he saw Dagon in the doorway. “I don’t want to talk!” he yelled at her.

Dagon pushed Ligur forward into him. They were now so close that their noses were almost touching.

“Don’t talk then, just do the tongues thing” Dagon shrugged, she was going to sort this out if it killed her, if she didn’t kill them first….

Ligur moved to kiss Hastur and Hastur froze. He didn’t know what to do. His maggots squirmed around as Ligur moved in. He wanted to run away, but he also wanted to stay right here. When their lips touched he felt faint. Then he let his mouth open slightly and they did ‘the tongues thing’. They did it for a bit, well, a lot of a bit maybe… maybe just a lot.

Dagon sighed in relief, then left them to it.


End file.
